The percentage of Americans who say they are strong in their religious faith has been steady for the last four decades but a new sociology analysis claims that religious groups who have become more staunchly devout have surged while others, notably Roman Catholics, who have sought to become more liberal under Vatican II in that time, have faded in popularity.

Catholics now report the lowest proportion of strongly affiliated followers among major American religious traditions. The drop in intensity could present challenges for the Roman Catholic Church in the U.S., the study suggests, both in terms of church participation and in Catholics' support for the Church's social and theological positions.

"On the whole, the results show that Americans' strength of religious affiliation was stable from the 1970s to 2010," said Philip Schwadel, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln sociologist who authored the analysis to be published in Sociology of Religion. "But upon closer examination, there is considerable divergence between evangelical Protestants on the one hand and Catholics and mainline Protestants on the other."

Schwadel modeled data from nearly 40,000 respondents to the General Social Survey from 1974-2010 and created a measure for Americans' strength of religious affiliation over time. Overall, the proportion of Americans who said they were "strongly affiliated" with their religion increased from 38 percent in the 1970s to a high of more than 43 percent in the mid-1980s but then that number slid to 37 percent by the end of the '80s and has remained about the same ever since.

By 2010, about 56 percent of evangelicals said they considered themselves strong adherents to their faith but for Catholics, it was just 35 percent, which was also 4 percentage points lower than mainline Protestants.

I think both are declining in commitment, thus the commitment in each are becoming more of a marked minority, and thus the headline as evangelical seem to have increased the most, yet the study also found:

The proportion of Americans who say they adhere to no religion climbed from about 6 percent in the 1970s and 1980s to 16 percent in 2010 [making it the fastest growing "movement. "

Mainline Protestants' devoutness fell to lows of roughly 30 percent in the late 1970s and late 1980s before gradually climbing to 39 percent in 2010.

Analysis of the main study is also labelled by some media,

Study: Gen-Xers only half as likely as Boomers to 'lose their religion."

"Education May Not Dilute Religious Beliefs."

"Churches are losing the less educated."

The Christian Century states,

Using data from the General Social Survey and the National Survey of Family Growth, Wilcox found an across-the-board drop since the 1970s in those who attend religious services at least once a month:

Among college-educated whites between ages 25 and 44, attendance slipped from 51 percent to 46 percent.

Among the least educated, attendance fell the most, from 38 percent to 23 percent.

Wilcox's findings are consistent with the conclusions recently reached by Univer­sity of Nebraska sociologist Philip Schwadel, who also examined GSS data. Schwadel's study, published in the Review of Religious Research, found that with each additional year of education, the likelihood of attending religious services increased 15 percent, and the likelihood of occasional Bible reading increased by 9 percent. - http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2011-08/why-are-american-churches-losing-less-educated

Not unexpectedly, CNN titles it, "Study: More educated tend to be more religious, by some measures," and then uses about half the article to promote atheism, awareness, including a quote by the leader of such scorning belief in God.

of course, one parish does not a summer make, but our theologically straight-ahead and intellectually rigorous Dominican parish brings about 4-6 adults to baptism and another couple of dozen or more into the Catholic Church every year.

I think that in these challenging times, God is opening many ears and hearts to himself.

Mine is “university parish.” I get to know a lot of bright, young, eager, thoughtful, and committed young Xtians. I’m tearing up as I think of them. Many are so committed that they have joined orders (lay Dominicans like me) or groups like “Communion and Liberation “ or Opus Dei. They are purposeful in their prayer and disciplined in their studies — while they get their degrees and start their families.

I have had the honor of “forming “ (training) nine inquirers to the Order of Preachers (Dominicans). Home -schoolers, physicians, people wth great gifts who eagerly seek a deeper commitmeht to Xt and his Gospel.

These are hard times for Xtians. But it is in hard times that our God shows his power and sets hearts on fire.

Thanks, MD. There's a continuous sifting and sorting. In my young adulthood, the Benedictine sisters I ran around with (Joan Chittister's priory) were sure that their imagined "future" was practically within their grasp: the Catholic Church would be cool with priestesses, contraception and sexual laissez-faire. Forty years later, they see no such "future" has occurred, and the Church re-asserting its increasingly confident, Christ-centered, counter-cultural, God-given identity on every front.

Sifting and sorting. The Spirit proves to be more than whatever was blowin' in the wind. The Church, battered but unbeaten, goes on.

12
posted on 12/26/2012 4:56:17 PM PST
by Mrs. Don-o
(May the Lord bless you, may the Lord keep you, May He turn to you His countenance and give you peace)

Wow! But that makes sense though. How can one adhere to any sort of faith and still vote Dem? Its not possible. I'm thinking that true faith in not only America but the world is actuall declining as a percentage of those who claim to be "religious".

Home -schoolers, physicians, people wth great gifts who eagerly seek a deeper commitmeht to Xt and his Gospel.

But sadly the preaching i have known, with few and somewhat exceptions, is one that presumes regeneration by proxy faith, and then fosters confident reliance in the church and one's merit to save, some mercy being expected, no matter how nominal, and never having coming to Christ as a damned culpable sinner and destitute of any means of rescue, and thus casting all their faith in the risen Lord Jesus to save them by His sinless shed blood, and so follow Him.

And false hope is not restricted to Catholicism but i see more to support it.

14
posted on 12/26/2012 6:45:11 PM PST
by daniel1212
(Come to the Lord Jesus as a contrite damned+destitute sinner, trust Him to save you, then live 4 Him)

the Church re-asserting its increasingly confident, Christ-centered, counter-cultural, God-given identity on every front.

You are selectively choosing what you consider is being taught. What one believes is not simply expressed by what they say, but how they apply it, and what is effectually conveyed can be quite different. And while you may exclude the liberals such as you mention, Rome treats them as members in life and in death.

In the past torture and death was officially sanctioned for dealing with such, as well as for sincere theological dissent, while having lost that power now the Ted Kennedy Catholics are treated with kids gloves.

Thus the SSPX and sedevacantist sects, who harsher than i am here on this issue.

Not that they are more correct in doctrine, and some of the latter types seem to long for the Inquisition with all its means.

Nor is spiritual declension not prevailing in Protestantism, but those can leave a liberal church while RCs must remain unequally yoked.

15
posted on 12/26/2012 7:05:44 PM PST
by daniel1212
(Come to the Lord Jesus as a contrite damned+destitute sinner, trust Him to save you, then live 4 Him)

I want to know what you are going to do about the 95 percent of Black Proestants who voted for Obama. How are you going to work to change their minds to be like the minds of other evangelicals?

A valid and good question. When it seems color triumphs over Christ then it reveals that they are not evangelical, despite usually being opposed to homosexuality. Thus this disconnect needs to be challenged more, such as was in an open letter to black evangelicals, in which Michael Brown (evangelist, and author of A Queer Thing Happened to America) candidly asks whether they compromised their beliefs by voting for the re-election of President Barack Obama.

S. Baptists, the largest Prot church and overall considered evangelical, recently elected a black as its president, and blacks now make up 20% of its membership (59% of blacks belong to a historically black Protestant church, and 15 percent ID as evangelical, and 12 percent say they are unaffiliated [Pew Research, 2009]).

Thus those black S. Baptists who vote liberal are akin to the majority of Catholics who overall do likewise. And thus you face the same problem, and the 75% of Latin Catholics who voted for Pres. Obama (and likely black Catholics voted at least as much), make up a far greater percentage of Catholics than do blacks or Latins do as evangelicals.

And which relates to Protestantism in general, which for many years has also been becoming liberal and thus the evangelical subset arose. Fundamentalism and evangelicalism were once the same as Christians obeyed Scripture in separating from those held to revisionist Christianity which often included Marxist liberal theology. But as is often the case in reactions, initially attention to social needs was minimized, though many evangelical type leaders had supported abolition.

However, "black evangelical" has been increasingly seen as an oxymoron based upon typical pollsters designation. This is not uniform, and often the mistake is made of lumping "born again" Christians with evangelicals, but the former is rather ambiguous and is shown to include those whose idea of God and being born again very liberal.

The "Evangelical" is designation is based on denominational affiliation (.S. Baptist, etc.) or response to a basic criteriqa (Barna) or self identification, though relatively few self identify as "evangelical." I comment more on this here

Due to the liberal nature of black Protestantism (black Catholics are not defined separately), despite self-ID or church as born again or evangelical (equating the former with the latter is a problem again) , Gallup concluded ,

while it may be reasonable to look at black evangelicals in some situations and for some purposes, for the current purposes evangelicals will be defined as only whites.... Thus, when all is said and done, there is a group of about 28% of the adult population in America today who are white, non-Catholic Christians and who describe themselves as evangelical or born again.

Sorry for a long answer to a short question, but there is much to be considered.

20
posted on 12/27/2012 5:41:50 AM PST
by daniel1212
(Come to the Lord Jesus as a contrite damned+destitute sinner, trust Him to save you, then live 4 Him)

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